Editorial: Sex ed vote earns praise for district

Editorial

Posted: Sunday, February 15, 2009

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With an 8-1 vote Thursday, the Clarke County Board of Education may have done more than has been done in some time to get this county out of the grinding intergenerational cycle that has put one of every three residents in poverty.

With its overwhelming vote in favor of ending the district's long-standing practice of offering abstinence-only sex education, the school board kept faith with its commitment to the OneAthens antipoverty initiative, a broad-based community effort to address the county's high poverty rate. The Clarke County School District is a major partner in the antipoverty effort, and is involved in other aspects of the initiative such as working to establish a career academy that will better prepare students for the world of work.

It's arguable, however, that Thursday's vote might be the most important thing the school district ever could do in addressing the local poverty rate. According to data reported a couple of years ago by the Northeast Health District, a public health organization serving this community, one of every three young women in Clarke and surrounding counties will become pregnant before reaching 20 years of age.

As the health district's director pointed out at the time, teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of school, likely to be unmarried, and their children are likely to have expensive health problems because of a lack of adequate prenatal care.

Those circumstances are, of course, the building blocks of poverty - not only for the teenage mother, but for her offspring as well - and it's easy to see how they set up the intergenerational cycle that has kept too many of this county's residents in poverty for too long.

It's more than a little interesting, if not somewhat chilling, to note the teen pregnancy rate reported just a couple of years ago almost exactly mirrors the 31 percent poverty rate in this county. Of course, it's a mathematical stretch to make a direct connection between the two statistics, but it nonetheless is clear that addressing the teen pregnancy rate is key to addressing the poverty rate in Athens-Clarke County.

That's exactly what the Clarke County Board of Education did with its Thursday vote, which found only longtime board member Vernon Payne opposed to the move away from abstinence-only education. Payne cited his religion as the basis for his opposition to the change in the school district's approach to sex education, and it's easy to sympathize with those who have moral qualms about that new approach.

But it's also important to recognize, as the majority of school board members did, that the local statistics on teen pregnancy suggest that the current abstinence-only approach is not working to keep young people from becoming sexually active and subsequently having to deal with the consequences of sexual activity - along with the rest of the community.

It's also important to note here that the school board was sensitive to the concerns of those in the community who might have some problem with a broader approach to sex education. Parents retain the option to keep their children out of the sex education classes that will be in place next year, and course materials will continue to teach abstinence as a proven method of avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The curriculum adopted by the school board also seems to be age-appropriate. The "Great Body Shop" program begins in kindergarten by teaching children about different kinds of relationships and about expressing affection, in addition to imparting information on how germs are spread. By fifth grade, students taking the Great Body Shop curriculum are learning about anatomy and puberty.

From there, students will move into the Family Life And Sexual Health program, where they will learn in middle school about the effectiveness of contraception.

All things considered, it appears the Clarke County Board of Education has taken a wise course with regard to sex education, making a good decision that could benefit this community for years to come.